I think we should restructure our economy (USA) to use less fossil fuels, not be dependent upon oil imports, pull back the tendrils of our empire, and stop meddling in the affairs of foreign countries with the goal of maximizing profits for multinational corporations and realizing the aims of whatever Israel's foreign policy happens to be at the moment.

The odds of that happening voluntarily? About 1000000:1. Odds of it happening eventually due to resource and financial constraints? Near unity.

People should have the right of self-determination. If they feel their governments are not serving their interests then they have the right to revolt, IMO.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The above is from the US Declaration of Independence.

Being an idealist, I believe it to be true and applicable anywhere there are men chafing under the rule of a tyrannical government.

A nations military should only be used in a nations self defense, not to entertain liberal cravings for shaping poor nations into images of themselves by force. -- Eastbay

Shooting the messenger is typical when you are incapable of arguing against them. -- Airline Pilot

[quote="Keith_McClary"]This was posted on our "News" page (I discern a political agenda):

McG work in ( )

For several years the government of Yemen a Sunni country has been fighting a civil war with Shia rebels who are trying to challenge the Government and introduce a shia country with an Islamic radical agenda. The rebels are heavily backed with moral and military support from the Iranian Government. The Government of Yemen is very weak and poor, and therefore is unable to exercise full control over the country. The situation is so bad that the last Jews in Yemen who have been there for over 3,000 years have been forced to leave in the past few months due to violence from the Shia rebels. (This tells us who you are).

The situation is deteriorating so rapidly that the Saudi (Sunni) Government has sent its military into Yemen to help the Yemeni Government. (Help what? Keep XOM's LNG Train functioning while keeping the pop w/o electricity on $955 per capita annual income?)

There have been reports that many Arab Sunni countries including Jordan, Morocco and Egypt have sent commando units to Yemen to help the government. (The US/Israel/UK Coalition of the Willing-And note not one of these is a functioning Democracy

The US is also helping Yemen financially and militarily to fight the rebels. (Plus aerial Bombing and Cruise Missiles with Spec Ops and of course CIA Paramilitary)

The ultimate goal of Iran is to impose a shia Government that will be obedient to it. (But as of yet, the Iranians have attacked no one while the US/Israel/UK can't remember a time when they weren't invading someone.)

While Yemen does not have much oil(BS and they have tons of NatGas which I'm sure is not far from the impoverished Houthi's).

a collapse of the government could have a large impact on oil prices. (Because then the wealth of the nation would be used to take care of it's own people)

Iran’s main goal in defeating Yemen would be to overthrow the Saudi Government which is the largest producer of oil in the war. (Non plussed. As we read further)

Even though Saudi Arabia has a majority Sunni population, if the Government collapsed Sunni Al Qaida extremists could take over who will align with the Shia government in Iran.(When the KSAcollapse, which has been a figment of ChevronBigOil sinceoil was discovered in 1932 it can only benefit the pooroppressed and women in the region.

But further, the US will takeover with all it's military might abandoning even the outer regions of it's empire to maintainthe King of Oil Fields.

Further, so how do the Sunnis all of a sudden unite with Shia's?

Will this be like Fundys uniting with Jews who seem to be the only ones keeping Sunni Shia apart according to your analysis ))

Are you Sunni, Shiite or Jewish (Tell us your political agenda):(Which of course tells us who you are and what your agenda is:

Keep the BAU Top .01% as wealthy as possible with the Bottom 90% Debt Slaves.

Here's an interesting article by controversial author, William Engdahl. Near the end, he claims:

Some fifteen years ago I was told in a private meeting with a well-informed Washington insider that Yemen contained “enough undeveloped oil to fill the oil demand of the entire world for the next fifty years.” Perhaps there is more to Washington’s recent Yemen concern than a rag-tag al Qaeda whose very existence as a global terror organization has been doubted by seasoned Islamic experts.

Please members tell me how much truth is in the above statement, and, for that matter, the rest of the article.

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.

In its strongest language yet, Yemen's government declared Thursday that there are limits to its military cooperation with the United States, warning that any direct U.S. action in this impoverished Middle East nation could bolster the popularity of Islamic militants.

mcgowanjm wrote:Thank you. Sounds just right. We're great with the stick.Carrots? Not so much. Which is why they hate us.

You got that backwards according to ex-the economic hitman John Perkins. The sticks come out when the carrots fail because not everyone eats the carrots. You would have to admit, to build consensus for another military adventure in America is stretching it right now so top Yemenite officials have already been bombarded with carrots to no avail already.

The Arabian subcontinent located in Southwest Asia is, evidently, geopolitically very critical due to its vast oil and natural gas reserves. Three easily blocked straits, commonly known as "chokepoints," may hamper ships from entering or exiting this area or the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. These three narrow chokepoints are the Strait of Hormuz, Bab el Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Suez or the Suez Canal.

... When one looks at that part of the world it is not a bright picture. The problems that may occur are numerous-- Inter Arab rivalries, Arab-Israeli conflicts, Arab-Iranian disputes, potential Iranian-Israeli hostilities, piracy, lawlessness, and terrorism. The Arab, conservative oil producing, countries of the gulf, as well as Iraq all depend on American military power for their protection if not their outright survival. Similarly, the responsibility of protecting shipping lanes in the area falls, entirely, on the United States Navy. The heavy American military presence in the neighborhood is not for show.

A pair of trousers catches fire in an aeroplane close to Detroit and missiles rain down on Yemen. Is this is what is called the butterfly effect? For Mohammed Hassan, the terrorist threat is only an excuse. In this latest chapter in our series "Understanding the Muslim world", our specialist explains what is really at stake in Yemen: i.e. undermining democracy in the Gulf in order to keep control over its oil.

Since the failed attack on the Amsterdam-Detroit flight, Yemen has hit the headlines. It's there that the young Nigerian terrorist is supposed to have trained. How could this country, an ally of the US, become of refuge for al-Qaeda?

First of all we must note this phenomenon which is repeating itself: every time that a regime backed by Washington is threatened, then terrorists appear on the scene. In the case of Muslim countries, it's al-Qaeda that gets the blame. This phantom terrorist group always pops up where nationalist or anti-imperialist movements give trouble to puppets supported by the US. That's what's happening now in Yemen. This country is ruled by a corrupt regime that is allied to Washington. But it is threatened by resistance movements...

Noticed in the news the port of Boston is set to receive a LNG tanker from Yemen in a couple of weeks. Homeland security and the coast guard say it's all good!

cube wrote:The US military can't even intercept planes on it's own soil and it takes them a week to mobilize just within US borders.

...After air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, it was tracked by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), assisted by several Air Force and Air National Guard fighters and an AWACS radar control plane, up until when it crashed. It was also tracked on radar screens inside the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon...

They were all over a private Learjet in minutes but let 3 commercial airliners fly all over the eastern seaboard for hours? Because they had multiple exercises running that day, one that simulated planes flying into the world trade center of all things! These exercises conveniently interfered with what is normal procedure - an FAA request to intercept wayward planes. You can imagine the confusion as one air traffic controller is quoted, "Is this real-world or exercise?"...

It seems to be over for the old regime there, 60-90% of army switched sides as of today. It looks as rehashed egyptian scenario, mil. will step up provide some stability, chunks of the former elites will have time to escape/channel out some of the funds. But what if anything substantial will change in terms of relations with US, SA/Gulf? Just reminder, Yemen sits just south of the SA border and the Gulf.

Amal Ibrahim, a housewife living in the Yemeni capital Sana'a, has to contend with power cuts that have become a daily occurrence since the protests and consequent political crisis began in the Arabian Peninsula country earlier this year.

“I am unable to do my household chores such as cooking and washing as an electricity outage can last for 22 hours a day,” she told dpa.

“This reminds me of the hard life in the early 1980s when housewives used to do housework manually for there were no electric appliances,” Ibrahim adds. ...

... “I miss those days when electricity used to be cut off for only four to five hours a day,” says Mohammed Abdullah, who runs a furniture workshop in Sana'a.

Due to the frequent power blackouts, Mohammed says he cannot meet orders from his customers on time.

“I have bought an electricity generator so that I can do my job,” he says. But he is facing another problem: a shortage of diesel fuel necessary for operating his generator.

“Diesel is not available in Sana'a. I have to go outside the capital to get it at prices, which are at least twice as high as before,” he says.

Work at the International Bank of Yemen in Sana'a has also been negatively affected by the lack of electricity, according to employee Basim al-Bahri.

“Worse, we sometimes run out of diesel fuel for generators used by the bank,” he adds. ...

... Despite the power outages, people in Sana'a notice that on certain occasions, electricity is always available.

This was the case on September 23 when the Yemeni president returned to the country from Saudi Arabia where he had stayed for almost four months recovering from injuries sustained in an attack on the presidential palace

Likewise, there are no power cuts when the president gives a televised speech.

“Only on such occasions, we can lead a normal life,” says al-Bahri. ...

Where "normal life" is defined as "life with quasi-magical powers derived from from fossil fuel."